What caused the multiculturalism in America?

To understand the choice between American liberalism and conservatism, we have to start with American history. The earliest immigrants in the United States were devout Puritans who immigrated from Europe, and the Christian tradition contained liberal founding spirit. Robert? Bella analyzed in her famous book Habits of the Mind that there are profound traditions of Christianity, * * and pacifism in American history, and American individualism is based on these two traditions: "Classical * * and pacifism put forward a positive citizen image dedicated to public interests, the Christian spirit of religious reform, and advocated a government idea based on individual voluntary participation in the form of Puritanism and sectarianism. However, the above two traditions put individual autonomy under the background of moral and religious responsibility. " The internal combination of individualism and Christianity has made the United States a very conservative country in moral values. Until the 1950s, the so-called conservatism was actually an individualism with a Christian background, or a Christianity advocating personal values: it not only respected the moral autonomy of individuals, but also was responsible for family, community, country and God. America is a melting pot of culture, sharing the same religious background and values. No matter what cultural background you come from, new immigrants should integrate into this free society with Christianity as the mainstream value.

However, the cultural rebellion and the equal rights movement in the 1960s triggered a real "cultural revolution" in the United States. Although cultural rebellion and racial equality are two parallel movements, the former is the cultural resistance of the younger generation to the Christian values pursued by the previous generation, and the latter is the struggle of ethnic minorities represented by blacks for the equality of social and economic rights and interests, but they have internal tacit understanding and connection in spiritual goals: deconstructing the mainstream social values with Christianity as the core, opening the floodgates for cultural relativism and cultural pluralism. Hutcheson, the author of God in the White House, wrote: "A fundamental change caused by the cultural rebellion in the 1960s was that the mutual support between the new religious schools and the mainstream interests of American society turned into an angry and hostile relationship. ..... Faced with the rapid development of pluralism and the obvious lack of religious values in public life, the Jewish-Christian tradition has been eroded obviously, leading to the decline of public morality. This recession is the main concern of the growing evangelical trend of American Christianity. "

Every era has its own emphasis. If the focus of postwar America was the ideological cold war in 1960s+0950s and racial equality in 1970s, then the social focus after 1960s+0960s+0980s gradually shifted to the differences in religious, moral and cultural values. Because the early immigrants in the United States also had a Christian background, a large number of new immigrants came from non-Christian nationalities after World War II, and the United States became a country where cultural pluralism and Christian evangelicalism coexisted, it seems that there are two Americas in terms of cultural value: one is America with cultural radicalism and cultural pluralism, one of which exists in universities and media, mainly distributed on the east and west coasts, and the other is America with Christian evangelicalism, which is rooted in American grassroots society. In recent years, the big debate on abortion, homosexuality and other issues is precisely the cultural contest between two Americans, and in a sense, it is also the "winner" of the contest between George W. Bush and Kerry.

On the one hand, cultural radicalism and even nihilism are surging, and the "difference politics" and "identity politics" proposed by multicultural traditions are on the other hand, and the Christian evangelicals are strongly rebounding. Liberalism caught in the middle is really in a dilemma and tired of coping. As an institutionalized liberalism, originally as a "citizen's religion", there is no conflict with Christian individualism in cultural value, which is one of the ethical foundations of liberalism. However, under the impact of cultural radicalism, liberalism is in an awkward position in value. As Gan Yang analyzed: "American liberalism represented by Rawls has been defending two somewhat contradictory positions in recent years. That is, first, they should maintain the liberal tradition of the New Deal in the United States, thus demonstrating the reasonable basis for the state to intervene in economic life; But second, as supporters of the so-called' cultural diversity' on racial, gender and cultural issues in the 1960 s, they strongly advocated that the state should not interfere in moral, religious and cultural fields. " Political philosopher Strauss: the revival of classical conservative political philosophy.

The late Harvard professor Rawls, as a master of American liberalism theory, did his previous work in A Theory of Justice: he argued that the state should reasonably intervene in the economic field to achieve "fairness and justice"; In the book "Political Liberalism", the latter work is mainly discussed: how to realize "overlapping knowledge" about justice in a liberal and democratic society with diversified values? As an institutionalized ideology, liberalism, on the one hand, should respond to the challenges of post-modernism and cultural pluralism, and confirm the era of God of Value as a reasonable fact; on the other hand, it should respond to the criticism of Christian tradition and cultural conservatism, avoid falling into value relativism and nihilism, and find a * * * knowledge base for social integration. Rawls made a major adjustment in the history of liberalism: he changed liberalism from a holistic ethics and political theory to just an organizational principle of political society. Liberalism first distinguishes between good and right. Liberalism has no specific position on ethical values such as what is good, what is good, what is human nature, and what is a good life. Liberalism only believes that man is rational, he can decide what is most valuable to himself, and only a life of independent choice is the best life. Therefore, all kinds of conflicting religions, morals and philosophies are understandable, reasonable and provable from their respective value standpoints. Liberalism maintains complete value neutrality to them. However, liberalism cannot tolerate any value relativism about what is right and what is justice. It firmly believes that "justice takes precedence over kindness". No matter what kind of immortal you worship in the private field of faith, or what you don't believe in, in the public field of politics, you must follow the universal principles of public rationality and justice stipulated by the core concepts and procedures of the Constitution. This kind of universal justice is the "overlapping knowledge" that different religions, morals and philosophies finally reach through open discussion and dialogue and repeated "reflective balance".

Although Rawls is an academic intellectual, his political philosophy is the theoretical basis of contemporary American liberalism. "Fairness and justice" is a legal argument from Roosevelt's New Deal to the racial equality law in the 1960s, and political liberalism is a liberal program to solve the problem of public identity in the multicultural era. In this American presidential election, the liberal Democrats represented by Kerry responded to the value conflicts of hardliners such as homosexuality and abortion according to this idea. However, Kerry's defeat this time is ostensibly a political failure of the Democratic Party, but in a deeper sense, it exposes the profound theoretical dilemma of political liberalism.

Liberalism gave up its own specific holistic theory and became an organizational principle at the social and political level. Originally expected to receive the effect of a double-edged sword: respond to multiculturalism with value neutrality, integrate society with just "overlapping knowledge", and draw a clear line with cultural nihilism. However, in recent years, in the US congressional and presidential elections, conservatism has won many times and liberalism has failed continuously. It can be seen that political liberalism is pale and powerless on the issue of moral value, which is the focus of today's times, and cannot hand over a satisfactory answer to voters. In order to make the principle of justice gain the widest recognition in a society with diverse values, political liberalism does not hesitate to give up its integrity, shelve the issue of value and expel it to the private sphere. However, what was expelled from the front door by public affairs slipped back from the back door, not only came back, but also became the protagonist of public opinion in the field of public affairs.

As far as abortion and homosexuality are concerned, according to the logic of political liberalism, these are private value preferences, personal pregnancy intentions or sexual orientation, and have nothing to do with justice in the field of public affairs. However, liberals ignore that in this era of unprecedented expansion of government power, private affairs that used to be controlled by religion or morality have now become public affairs managed by law and politics: Is abortion legal? How many months old does the fetus enjoy the inalienable right to life? Can homosexuality be legalized? Do they (they) enjoy the same legal marriage rights as heterosexuals? Conservatives' answers to this series of highly divided social and cultural issues are very simple, while political liberalism is as vague and ambiguous as Kerry's answers in the general election. Cultural value is not only personal orientation, but also public affairs. Any individual's value choice is inseparable from the public's value standard. Although the basic presupposition of the dichotomy of goodness and justice in political liberalism can be established in theory, it has hit a wall everywhere in concrete social practice. The essence of cultural conflict is politics, and behind politics are also cultural differences. So is the so-called "cultural politics".

Of course, it is not completely impossible for Rawls to foresee the relationship between private value (goodness) and public justice (justice). The political liberalism he demonstrated set a core basic principle: "righteousness takes precedence over goodness". That is to say, when a person's religious, moral or philosophical theory conflicts with the principle of social justice, universal justice has indisputable priority over special goodness. But the problem is that "justice takes precedence over kindness" is only a special belief of liberalism, not a universal social norm recognition. Not to mention that various religious theories firmly believe in the absolute priority of faith, social legitimacy can only come from the goodness in religious values, and even various conservatives such as communitarianism and Strauss' classical political philosophy are opposed to presupposing the priority of justice by pulling away from the value concept of goodness. The first principle of political liberalism, "righteousness is better than goodness", is highly divergent or even incommensurable in a liberal society with multiple values. Almost all the major differences in American society today occur in the fields of culture and morality. Those value conflicts between goodness and goodness are reflected in the political way of "correctness" and cannot be judged by the universal justice principle of law or politics.

The principle of justice of political liberalism comes from the overlapping knowledge of various religions, morals or philosophies. However, due to the differences in values, some can form overlapping knowledge through rational and reasonable dialogue, while others are incommensurable, making it difficult to form * * * knowledge, such as homosexuality and abortion. The more it involves the core values of the world outlook, the more difficult it is to find common ground. Rawls thinks that people with different beliefs can form "overlapping knowledge" because there is a presupposition of "political man": I believe that everyone is rational, and it is possible to conduct public dialogue according to public reason and make value choices in the way of "justice takes precedence over goodness". However, even in the United States, a country with a history of more than 200 years of constitutional democracy, because most people are still Christians, they seek answers to many social problems involving culture and politics not from the procedural legitimacy of the law, but from God. Xue Yong analyzed in his book that the United States was a country founded by Christianity, but the later historical development split religion into two parts. One is rational religion, believing in the separation of church and state. Most of them are highly educated social elites, basically a group of liberals who voted for Kerry, mainly distributed in the metropolises on the east and west coasts, especially in New England. The other is emotional religion, whose followers are mostly Christian evangelicals who voted for George W. Bush. They gather in the southern and central regions, live in semi-closed towns, and go to church to pray to God every weekend.

Two Americans, two religions. Kerry captured a rational America, believing in Rawls and that "justice takes precedence over kindness". Just as many people in China think that new york, Boston and Los Angeles are the United States, they also think that rational liberalism represents the American spirit. I didn't know there was another America, another American spirit. This is the emotional and religious spirit represented by the American and Christian gospels on which George W. Bush relies. These traditional "Yankees" who live in the countryside are usually the silent majority. In national newspapers, such as The New York Times, Washington post and the Los Angeles Times, they can't be seen or heard. But they do exist. Every election year, these devout believers, who believe that faith is above everything else, and kindness takes precedence over justice, become the power to control the White House. In Ohio, which decided the fate of Bush and Kerry this time, despite the economic recession, most voters finally chose Bush. The choice they made was not the "economic man" choice of utilitarian liberalism, nor the "political man" choice of political liberalism, but the "religious man" choice of pious belief in God and belief above all else. As an Ohio voter said, "I lost a third of my income in these four years, but I won't blame Bush. Work comes and goes, but faith is eternal. "

On the issue of cultural morality, the value-neutral policy of political liberalism actually leads to tolerance of cultural radicalism and value nihilism. Liberalism gave way to them step by step, and the latter constantly challenged the bottom line of politics and law: first, free abortion, then legalized gay marriage, what would happen next? Legalize marijuana? Free cloning of offspring? ... these non-public issues, which are regarded by political liberalism as individual's free choice, have become or will soon become the focus of public issues. Is bioethics really just a private matter? Can you really do anything on the question of what is a good life and what is a valuable life? Cultural activists will certainly think that although liberals disapprove, they can only tolerate it out of the principle of value neutrality, just like Kerry's attitude towards the homosexuality of Vice President Cheney's daughter, which is too ambiguous.

When cultural radicalism is pressing hard and liberalism can only keep appeasement, conservatism has a strong rebound. Conservatism is manifested in the challenge of Strauss' classical aristocratic political philosophy to Rawls' mainstream liberalism in the elite class and the re-emergence of Christian evangelicals in the grassroots class. These two forces, one is a conservative trend of thought that strongly doubts liberalism to post-modernism, and the other is a religious mass that appeals to faith and emotion. They are the theoretical and social basis of the Bush administration.

These conservative forces, originally scattered on the edge of the college and at the grassroots level, are not institutionalized, let alone organized. However, after the Bush administration came to power, with the White House as the center, conservatism finally got an opportunity to be institutionalized. Especially 9? After 1 1, George W. Bush used the war on terrorism as an excuse to create an external enemy for the United States-the enemy of the liberal system and Christian civilization, and played a new "politically correct" patriotic card, trying to call God back to the secular society with conservative Christian values and integrate the moral foundation and value foundation of the United States.

Last year, Huntington published his new book, Who Are We? The challenge of American national identity (the Chinese version of this book has recently been published by Xinhua Publishing House), the conservative authority of American colleges has shifted the line of sight of "clash of civilizations" from the outside of the international community to the inside of American society. In his view, American national identity once consisted of four parts: nation (British nation), race (white), culture (Protestantism) and politics (American Constitution). After more than a century of the impact of cultural pluralism brought by immigrants from Central Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, there is only one thing left: * * * * political belief. This is also the basic factual basis of Rawls' argument in Political Liberalism. However, in Huntington's view, it is very dangerous to build a country only by political beliefs. At the beginning, the Roman Empire and the Soviet Empire relied on the cohesion of national ideology to maintain integration because they lacked the same nation and culture. It is best that these empires collapse without exception. Worried about the future of the United States, Huntington shouted loudly: we should resolutely resist cultural pluralism and political liberalism in national identity and resolutely defend the core position of Protestant culture in American society. This primitive settlement culture brought by the Mayflower is the foundation of the United States. Obviously, the ideas put forward in Huntington's book have made a theoretical endorsement for the revival of Christianity in the White House.

On the one hand, it is the aggressiveness of cultural radicalism, on the other hand, it is the strong revival of conservatism. Where does liberalism go? Where will the value-neutral liberals go? The defeat of the Democratic Party this time is not only Kerry's personal failure, but also a major setback in the theory of political liberalism behind it. Liberalism presupposes that "justice takes precedence over kindness" can only be the public reason of half Americans, and it cannot integrate the other half. Therefore, liberalism is in a dilemma on the most intense moral value issue in today's conflict, and can't come up with a solution that convinces most people. This is the real dilemma of political liberalism.

In the fair arrangement of political, social and economic rights and interests, liberalism basically realizes the knowledge overlap among different religions, morals and philosophical theories, but on the more core moral value issue, it is difficult to overlap knowledge because of different good understandings! The overlapping knowledge of political liberalism has a relatively thin value base. Although it has its moral basis: respect for people and respect for different beliefs, when different beliefs conflict, it is difficult for neutral liberalism to give appropriate compensation to the disadvantaged groups as it solves the problem of distributive justice. The loss of kindness and a better life cannot be compensated by any other material or spiritual means.

Rational America, perceptual America. These are two Americans, one America, which respectively embody two aspects of the American spirit. This is the vitality and trouble of America. Well done, rationality and belief, elite and grassroots can form a benign interaction, balance and complement each other; Poorly done and frequent conflicts threaten the social and moral integration of the country. The biggest problem facing liberalism now is how to integrate another America, another America that believes in Christianity; How to respond to the problem of cultural and moral values is no longer to shelve the problem of goodness in brackets and exile it to the private sphere, but to actively face the differences in values and re-engage in dialogue and discussion in the public sphere, so as to find the most common ethical basis and value bottom line of free and democratic life.

Max. Weber pointed out that modernity is a process of "disenchantment", while liberalism is essentially a product of "disenchantment" and a public religion in secular times. It believes that with the development of secularization, people will bid farewell to traditional religions, beliefs and emotions and become "rational people", which is why liberalism is optimistic about the rational kingdom of liberal democratic order. However, liberalism forgot Weber's worries about the conflict of "value gods" after "disenchantment". The deeper the secularization, the more sacred it is, and surpassing these values has not withdrawn from the historical stage, but has shown itself in a sharper way. Freedom can only provide people with the possibility of choice, and democracy can give people equal dignity, but it can't bring meaning to people's lives and tell you what the beautiful value is. And only a valuable and meaningful life is a perfect life. However, the secularization of modernity destroys the integrity of people's inner world and social moral life with instrumental rationality, which makes the value crisis after democratization particularly prominent. 9? 1 1 The incident touched "the deepest religious nerve in secular society" in different civilizations in the world (in Habermas' place). The dispute between Bush and Kerry reflects the same problem of a multicultural nation-state: the "value god" conflict in secular society.

The American presidential election in 2004 indicates that American liberalism will face a new breakthrough. In practice, we expect great presidents who can change American history like Roosevelt and Kennedy. In theory, we expect a generation of masters who have the ability to create a new liberal life since Locke, Kant and Rawls. However, all this is invisible. Maybe a few years, maybe decades, will be the story that the next generation will see.